The Conception of Specificness of Children’s Drawings

The educational significance of children’s drawings was appreciated in Czech literature for the first time by Otakar Hostinsky in the seventies as a result of the influence of Semper’s view of their analogical development with the development of artistic expressions of the primitive man. A pedopsychological analysis of children’s drawings; based on research was made by František Cada in co-operation with schoolteachers j at the beginning of this century. It was a part of a research into children’s expressions; in general, especially children’s speech. Cada regards children’s drawings as a special way of children’s expressions similar to children’s speech. Otokar Chlup, while in Brno, organised a research into art expressions from the educational point of view, especially among less capable children. Creative imitativeness is considered by him to be the j substance of these expressions. When analysing them he proceeds from children’s j imagination and fancy, which among the less capable children appears to be strikingly undeveloped from the technical aspect. Chlup’s conclusions were confronted by his pupil L. Ondrůjova with the views of world authors pedopsychologists in her book ≫Children’s Drawings≪ . In our school practice as regards artistic expressions two Czech teachers in the 1920’s have done exceptionally well. They were teacher’s experimentalists from the House of Childhood at Horni Krnsko: Ladislav Švarc, an advocate of the children’s synthetic drawing and Ladislav Havranek, a specialist in the children’s decorative drawing.